Herhold: Apple sweats the details with its new headquarters

When he got up to speak Tuesday at a public hearing on the big new Apple headquarters planned near his house, Patrick Robbins had the markings of a potentially unhappy neighbor. "You've heard a lot from me already, and you'll hear a lot more,'' he said.

I thought: Here's a brave man. The crowd at the Quinlan Community Center in Cupertino overwhelmingly backed the project. Standing up and expressing less than total fervor was like appearing at the pep rally of a high school opponent in your letter jacket.

But no, that wasn't quite it. Robbins, who lives in Santa Clara, doesn't oppose the project. He just wants to limit its impact. In an odd way, he wound up giving Apple and its spaceship-like building more of an endorsement than all the hosannahs from its backers.

Take the parking garage planned across from his house. Understandably, Robbins did not want to look at an ugly structure. So he called Eric Morley, Apple's ambassador to the neighbors. And presto, chango: The garage will have art on its exterior.

It went that way for most of the afternoon Tuesday as Apple unveiled its plans for the 2.8 million-square-foot structure designed by Sir Norman Foster (The readers of this column have christened it "The Core,'' but if you call it "The Spaceship,'' we understand).

Mango tea

No detail seemed too small for the Apple planners. Outside the hearing, in the expectation that a discussion of traffic impacts and riparian corridors would cause hunger, caterers had set up a snack of pizza, with extras like pickles and mango tea.

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One by one, representatives of virtually every interest group got up to sing the project's praises. The disabled community. The bicyclists. The building trades. Even the postmistress of Cupertino predicted that mail to the new headquarters would help save the post office.

By that, I don't mean to say that the project, which Steve Jobs first proposed in the last months of his life two years ago, is beyond legitimate criticism. A traffic simulation showed that the southbound ramp to Highway 280 at Wolfe Road will back up badly at afternoon rush hour.

A letter from a neighbor to the editor of the Mercury News Wednesday decried the structure as a "fortress.'' And you can raise legitimate doubts about Apple's goal to have 34 percent of the trips in other than single-vehicle cars, even with a fleet of shuttle buses.

Finding oaks

For me, the compelling detail was the trees. The environmental impact report says Apple plans to plant more than 6,200 trees, though it has to remove as many as 3,600 in construction. Dan Whisenhunt, Apple's director of real estate and facilities, explained that the company has been hand-selecting oaks in northern California for the site.

You knew then Steve Jobs' DNA had not vanished. Apple's stock price may be down from its peak. But the spirit of the man who looked at hundreds of shades of white for the perfect color still lives at Pruneridge Avenue and Wolfe Road.

The planners had to do their duty Tuesday when they pointed out that a "reduced density'' building would be the best environmental option. Cupertino officials than asked Whisenhunt whether that would be acceptable. They smiled when he answered with a single word: "No.''